


i'm going back to the house that love built

by song_of_staying



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Friendship/Love, Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5902852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/song_of_staying/pseuds/song_of_staying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Up in it, lovin’ it, yes I heard ya mother said “Come again?”</p><p>(<i>Love or mercy keeps me at your door. Let me come inside.</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm going back to the house that love built

Mulligan calls her Calliope. She calls him a tease, and lets him rhyme at her about gods and constellations. She tells him, I've heard worse. He thinks, you wrote better. She doesn't know he knows her pseudonym, absolutely doesn't know he keeps a clipping-book of her poems. His mama was a collector and his grandma was one too, and he keeps the tradition.

He's a little bit in love with her, and that's fine.

She never let him sleep over before the first snowfall. Then, she invited him herself, and showed him to a bed she'd made up, in a separate bedroom. She said, don't worry about it, babe, a lady needs her space.

The bed and the bedding used to belong to her asshole son; the one who doesn't say hi when he passes her on the street. Mulligan's got this daydream about challenging him to a duel, and knocking him down for good. He would never do that to her, but it feels good to think about it.

She hates cooking, says she hasn't picked up a pan since her husband died (fons et origo of asshole behavior in the family, got himself run over by a horse of sound judgement). She's got an arrangement with the widow who lives down the street. The first time he eats her cooking, he declares, without thinking, that he's going to need to seduce this widow. Calliope laughs and says, you're too late, boy, I already did.

They share lovers and rumours, and she finds him customers who want reasonably-priced suits. She's fine with Mulligan's friends, but Lafayette she <i>likes</i> – Mulligan thinks they might have slept together, thinks he might have wanted to see it. She doesn't love the revolution, but she doesn't fear it either. The only thing she fears is being forgotten; her only bitterness is that her grandchildren have never been taught her name.

When Mulligan goes to battle, she gives him a diamond bracelet, in case he needs to bribe someone, and a few inches off one of her braids, in case he needs luck and God can't be bothered to provide it. He tells her he'll come back to her. She smiles and says he'll be too busy enjoying his laurels, if they win, or his earthworms, if they lose.

She doesn't know yet that Hercules Mulligan never tells a lie where it counts.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to bigsunglasses for the beta!
> 
> Title and summary is from Back To The House That Love Built - Tito and Tarantula.


End file.
